Hunger 2010

Lori Heuring stars as a doctor trapped in a well along with other selected victims, chosen for a madman's human behavior experiments to determine how they will contend with having no food, their bodies desire for sustenance slowly demanding nourishment. Linden Ashby, Joe Egender, Lea Kohl, and Julian Rojas round out the cast of suffering humans, Bjorn Johnson the psychopath monitoring them. Heuring explains to us in one scene, in detail, how the body will slowly deteriorate, the organs cannibalizing inside before total break down, starvation, and death. Bjorn Johnson's motivation derives from an incident when he was a child, eating from his dead mother in order to survive. Johnson will see if this group would do the same. Attempts to escape and reason how to get out of the well give way to anguish, fear, sickness, and mania.



When a couple, choosing an area near the well as a make-out spot, are murdered by Johnson before they could get the trapped group help, we see that he will do whatever it takes to see that no one ruins his experiments. He wants proof that others would do the same as him in order to live(he even places a scalpel down there with them, sharp enough to skin flesh from bone). And, he is proved correct when one among them sick with a heart condition is picked to be food by the more savage ones no longer able to hunger.



It gets particularly unsettling when Huering is bound by the others so she can not interfere with their din-din, and we can hear flesh tearing and chewing. Lea Kohl, as Anna, is quite chilling when she admits, in a cold and heartless manner, how she convinced Alex(Rojas) to kill Grant(Ashby) so easily, with Jordan(Heuring) having to endure her testimony restrained.



HUNGER is one of those movies which reveals the true colors of those trapped bit by bit until each character is fully exposed. Again, as is often the case, it's a woman(in this case, Anna) who manipulates using sex and her allure as a tool of destruction. Alex's experienced cannibalism(and cabin fever)evolves into a psychosis as he rants about the essence of flesh while Luke(Egender) is given the keys to the kingdom so to speak(he has the scalpel). Essentially, Alex becomes an animal, his humanity all but gone, just a primal beast remaining. Luke is antagonistic and intolerable from the get-go, difficult to get along with. When Luke snaps, it's no surprise.

Anna's true self emerging is rather an eye-opener, although using your beauty and look of innocence as an advantage shouldn't shock anyone watching the movie, I don't think. Besides the cannibalism and bloodletting which on their own are disturbing, Johnson's enjoyment at seeing his subjects tearing themselves apart may be even more macabre. Johnson has a wall with photographs and written information about each subject proving that he took special care in which people would be trapped in his dungeon. He underestimates Jordan, though, who retains her humanity and outsmarts her monstrous peers.

It's the SAW formula made manifest once again, kidnapped characters from different backgrounds forced into a dangerous game where the one responsible for their predicament looks on from afar in a secret room as they slowly succumb to their base natures, the group trying to find an exit strategy, one by one turning on each other. "What will we do to survive," is a story arch used a lot the last seven or so years. Solid acting from a capable cast of mostly unknowns along with a twisted story give HUNGER must-see appeal for fans of the SAW films and their ilk.